Summer has come. We spend more time on the balcony. I wanted something that can play soft music on the balcony – I don’t like the idea of turning up the music in the living room.

The SqueezeBox requires the Mac Mini to be up and running – I don’t like the idea of having a computer running somewhere in the house just so I can hear music elsewhere in the house.

I did not listen to a lot of InternetRadio on the Squeezebox. It was tricky finding new stations, and often bookmarks for radiostations would expires because the bookmark apparently stored something ephemeral instead of the real thing.

Anyway, the thing is that it easier to sync my iPod with iTunes, and then just use the iPod instead of the Mac Mini as music server. Plug the iPod into the Logitech thing, and instant access to 33G of music.

The Logitech user interface is elite pure-crap, by the way. Press this or that, then up and down to pick the play list. That’s as far as I got. The Squeezebox was at least somewhat better. But here’s the good part. I can just grab the iPod, save the old On-The-Go playlist, collect a new one, plug the iPod, and I’m done. Yes, the On-The-Go playlist thing has turned out to be a major feature!

I decided to move the radio near the balcony. Whenever I’m sitting outside, I can move the radio and listen to some music outside. And for those few hours I do enjoy the sun, I can plug the iPod into the radio using the ordinary audio cable. It works. I like.

Today I bought 2 × 1 GB RAM for my Mac Mini. Opening the bastard was a hassle. It looks nice, but it proved to be impossible to open without any scratches. Let’s hope that iPhoto gets usable again. With 512 MB the system was getting hard to use.

Looking back at the last months, I think I can safely say that the SqueezeBox was an unnecessary buy. I rarely listen to it. I think part of the problem is that I don’t bought into any of the music services (Pandora, Rhapsody), and that I switch off my Mac Mini at night, so it won’t serve any music when I’m most likely to be in my bedroom and near my !SqueezeBox.

I use the smallest and cheapest iBook – a 14” thing with a 30GB harddisk, upgraded with some RAM (1.25GB). It does everything I want it to do – any many things I could do with much less. Specially that often enough I have my laptop hooked up to my radio on my bedside table (2006-01-14 Gadgets).

Hooked Claudia’s brother HL-5030 printer, plugged it into my iBook, and tried to print. No drivers! Googled for brother+drivers, downloaded the drivers, installed them, and printed. Worked! Noticed that those were CUPS drivers.

Booted up SlackWare box, tried to figure out how CUPS actually works. Made /etc/rc.d/rc.cups executable, ran it with the start parameter, looked at http://localhost:631/, didn’t get it, downloaded the drivers for Linux – .deb or .rpm – figured out how to extract the stuff from the .deb file, copied it into my directory tree using stow, installed it by looking at the postinst script. Looked at http://localhost:631/ again, found the new printer!

When I look at http://localhost:631/printers/HL5030, I see that the device URI is usb:/dev/usb/lp0. I tried modifying the printer and choosing different USB devices + printing test pages, but that just resultet in error messages. When I use lp0, there are no error messages on the printer page. Thus, the CUPS system seems to know about the printer.

Notice how there is no /dev/usb/lp0 – there’s only /dev/usb/lp1 and a /dev/lp0.

I went back to modify the printer again on http://localhost:631/printers/HL5030 and changed the device type again (picking the first USB printer). I think that’s what it used to be, but I’m ready to try again.

Strange: Now the printer page says that the device URI is usb://Brother/HL-5030%20series – hm, that’s new!

It turns out that EricRaymond has written a rant about CUPS on 2006-04-11 – only a few days before I posted my original CUPS story! His opinion? “I eventually had to apply m4d skillz gained from wrestling with sendmail to solve a problem the CUPS documentation never even hinted about.”

Years ago, the CD player of my Denon D-G1MD broke down. I liked that little system because it had a MD player built-in, and at the time I really believed in Minidiscs. I felt the MP3 players were forcing me to waste even more time at the computer.

The replacement I bought was the Kenwood HM-DV7, which integrated DVD playback, but had a country code (in Switzerland these are not mandatory, so I was a fool for not buying it). Plus the technical gadget to simulate surround sound + subwoofer made for terrible sound quality when listening to music. And it had a lousy radio. I hated it. It ended up in the cellar. (You want it?)

I decided to replace the replacement system with a Sony DVP-NS590P. Code-free. It didn’t have an amplifier, so I hooked it up to the old Denon system. Since I wanted to listen to CDs with the system, I had to do that. It also meant that when I wanted to watch a movie, I had to either fiddle with the cables, or use the stereo. With both speakers to the right of the monitor, that spoilt half the stereo effects.

It also meant I had nowhere to hook up my Airport Base Station: When streaming music from my iBook, I had to fiddle with the cables again. I ended up not doing it.

All this time, I had my old, trusty other Denon D-F88 system in my bedroom: UPA-F88 amplifier, UTU-F88 tuner, UCD-F88 CD player, and UDR-F88 tape deck. It had good sound, worked, and was in good shape. And it had two free inputs: DVD/AUX and MD. I didn’t buy the MD component at the time – I bought that system before MD was my solution to timeshifting radio shows!

Anyway, I decided that I needed to shift the D-F88 into the living room so that I could hook up the Airport Base Station and possibly a portable MD or MP3 player. Being able to listen to CDs via that system, I could connect the Sony DVD player to the TV entirely.

Now I just needed a new system for the bedroom. It should be small, and simple. I rarely listen to music in the bedroom. Often it’s just radio anyway. I don’t need an integrated alarm clock. I used to use the D-F88 system as an alarm clock for years, but that was during my time at university.

I decided that a Tivoli Model One was stylish enough, small enough, and simple enough for me. It had one AUX jack for my MP3 player should I need it. No stereo required, and no CDs. Models two and three do that.